Success at last! I got through a clean test of remote setup with the Raspberry Pi 4. My powered hub died on me but it worked yesterday so I need a new one to run 3 off one Pi, but for now I’ll just run a second device. I found a work around for my OBS audio issues too. It would have issues with timestamps on the audio and knock it out after a bit sometimes but now I’m using the gstreamer plugin to feed to the loopback audio device and using that as the desktop audio src which seems to not care about the timestamps.
How it’ll work on Windows I have no idea but it works on my Ubunbtu machine. So I’ll be able to mix game audio over the commentator mic now too.
Video is pretty smooth too at only 100ms latency over the Wifi.
I didn’t get around to making a new disc image yet but I’ll be working on that tonight and tomorrow.
What kind of cameras are you using? I don’t think a pi will have enough computing power to encode a full hdmi camcorder with a CamLink, but I imagine it can pass through usb cameras okay that already do some encoring. There’s also some HD60 capture devices that claim to do encoring already so I’m wondering if you could use those with a full camcorder and if the pi could handle it
I have a Brio on the playfield and a C920 on the backglass (and player cam when I use it). There’s not enough USB power for the Brio and 2x C920s though so the Pi has issues with the USB devices. I think it can barely push 3xC920s without a powered hub, but it can do two of either pretty well. The Brio is kind of a power hog.
I have a CX405 and older Camlink that work with the Pi4 (since it has USB 3.0), but the encoding is a bit trickier on it. It can do mjpeg pretty well but I haven’t tested it on the Pi4 yet, I’ll be trying that soon though. And the Pi does have a hardware encoder for h264 but it’s capped at 30fps. I’m using the onboard encoders for the Brio which does the mjpeg and the C920’s can do mjpeg or h264 (which I use the later). So the Pi really only does network transport for the RTSP stream with them. I do encode the audio as AAC to send it over the wifi though.
The Pi supports pretty much any UVC device but might require a bit of tweaking in the code to make it support it. Each camera has different supported features which makes things interesting.
If you’re going to use a Brio, you pretty much need the Pi4. For just C920 setups, the 3b+ or 3a+ would be fine, or older, but I don’t recommend it since those are limited to 2.4G networks.
So the Brio can give you encoded 1080p 60fps that the pi can route through rtmp? That’s pretty awesome if so. Also, you don’t need to do WiFi, simply using an Ethernet cable would be a huge upgrade to most setups since Ethernet cables are so easy to come by and are pretty thin and easy to work with.
RTSP which is similar but different to RTMP (and I still don’t understand all of them). It’s my impression that RTMP is a Flash wrapper so you’d need to encode it in h.264 which would require re-encoding it on something more capable. The Pi runs a Python script that wraps GStreamer to create an RTSP server that clients can connect to, multiple in fact so local video is possible too. Things like other GStreamer apps (plugin for obs available) or VLC.
But ya, the Brio can do mjpeg 1080p60. It’s a little fish eyed but back when you could pick them up for just over $150 they weren’t a bad deal. But it really wasn’t until Raspberry Pi released their 4 that all of this kind of fell together properly now.
I did a quick test the my CX405 and 720p60 settings over the camlink and the Pi seems fine to stream mjpeg over the wire.
Also, the software that runs on the Pi keeps configs for each webcam serial (or one camlink) and can adjust the settings in realtime so you can play around with zoom, birghtness, exposure using a web browser.
Unfortunately I don’t have Windows so all of this is on Linux machines but it’s possible to get it going on Windows with a little bit of work. And I’m more than happy to help work through any problems.
Hmm interesting according to this Wikipedia page and a Logitech post, only older versions of their webcams do on device h264 encoding. So if you could find those older ones you could plug them in to a pi and the pi wouldn’t have to do any encoding, just pass the h264 along. But it sounds like your results are showing the pi4 can actually do some encoding itself without any problem?
I just pushed a new version of the Picam software image. It now supports the Raspberry Pi 4 with the latest Buster operating system and I’ve fixed a few bugs. Hopefully it’s a somewhat smooth experience. I plan to make some tutorial videos shortly and work more on the UI and instructions, plus add a bit more in to prevent invalid configurations, like non-compatible encodings for a given webcam. Scroll up a bit for the link to the project.
PM me if you run into any issues if you decide to give it a try.
I did a test stream last night. I have a Brio on the playfield and razer kiyo cams for player and screen. I wasn’t at all trying to buck the trends of what others are using. This is simply all I could track down around with the shortages. I don’t have a dedicated mic yet so I had it running from a cam. The initial feedback was audio was too loud from coils and low for voice. A mic is on my list now. I also have one of the light stands coming to help me set it all up a bit better.
I also learned that Twitch doesn’t auto record a VOD unless you tell it to.
Thanks to the Buffalo guys for bringing their crew over. The feedback was super helpful!
Also thanks to Deadflip and Buffalo Pinball for your guides. They are most helpful.
There are a bunch of Sony Handycam 405cx’s that will likely go for less than $100.00 on Ebay right now (4/7/2020). You don’t need the SD card or battery. There are even a few just over that price with a Buy It Now option.
The Sony Handycam has been a great playfield camera for me. The color and buttery smooth 60fps for the money is tough to beat. Lots of on-camera configuration settings for shutter speed, etc… I’ve experimented with cheaper and more expensive cameras on the playfield (Logitech 920, 922, Razer Kiyo, and the Sony A6400 to name a few) and the Handycam was comparable to the Sony A6400 in terms of quality. The Handycam’s focus on the top/bottom of the playfield is pretty good but that’s where the A6400 won out. IMO not worth the cost difference: $100.00 vs. $1000.00 for a little bit better of focus on the outer edges
I have only tried the Brio on the playfield so far. The Kiyo puts out a little light which seems to be a good thing for the player cam. Not sure it would provide much for the playfield. Also the glare might not be great with it being so direct on the glass.
The reason is because the Monoprice one supports two-way audio (e.g., Like you would need for a skype call). Super useful if you want commentators to hear the game audio, or when you are setting up doing test recordings.
That said, if anyone wants to buy the Behringer, I have a lightly used one sitting around collecting dust that I’ll sell you
